


My gods dwell in temples made with hands

by CasciaMorta



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Crowley is a pine nut, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of asphyxiation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sad Wank, first he pines then he..., it gets better but these are the tags so far, it's in a sexy context but it's just sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-11-02 12:51:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasciaMorta/pseuds/CasciaMorta
Summary: Crowley experiences the joyful colours of nature, finds his reflection in the melancholy of music, chases after perfumes, fakes foreign touch and learns the sweetness of honey and words said out loud even if nobody is listening.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware something is going to sound weird - if not completely devoid of any sensible grammar - because I'm writing in my third language and I know how brains (don't) work, especially mine. I haven't written anything satisfying in 10 years, so it's a bit of a miracle I am posting anything at all on this website. Say hi to my nerves. If you find redundant ideas it's only because I'm incredibly unoriginal and linguistically challenged.  
Have a confused read.

_My gods dwell in temples made with hands; _  
_and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete:_  
_ too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth,_  
_ I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also._

** _De Profundis_ **

The serpent doesn’t remember the sight of God, but when he lays curled up on top of the wall he thinks it might look like the desert that’s blinding him.

A new creation of gas and fire turns sand into piercing rays of ochre and unfiltered white, and the sky only seems to look like sky at the very border with the horizon now that light is learning how to dance on every surface but still paints confused shapes behind his eyes.

He peers through the spire of scales, shiny crimson and coal like a fresh wound on bloodwood bark, hoping that the shadow will be enough.

It’s never enough. In this semblance of celestial shades he knows he doesn’t fit.

Oh, but the garden always welcomes him. In the garden he can finally see. The lilac and moss, the amber and sapphire, the clean palette of flowers, the ever-changing flow of water, the bizarre show of striped fur and iridescent skin, the warm browns of the dirt he molds with his slow and gentle crawl. Spheres that resemble the ones he created in the firmament, but hanging from crooked branches, so ripe, so close.

A hint of blinding light, still. A hint of fire. A hint of heaven and hell. The serpent remembers the exploded whiteness of dandelions as he catches himself staring.

Will there be dandelions after the temptation? He will only need one and a single blade of grass to compare him to, and the full expanse of the desert to describe his fascination. He stares as long as he can.

Just a few words in the right order, bite marks that hold all the meaning in the universe, to instill a spark into sterile eyes. to make bodies recognise other bodies as different, shy away from themselves and from others, hide behind serrated leaves, heavy cloths, artificial fibers.

But the infinite rainbow of knowledge, how can that be bad?

He approaches the angel now that his work is done. He’s the only wonder of Eden he hasn’t known yet. Where is the sword? Why would the humans need a weapon?

And while he lets himself be charmed by his candour he recognises the same tunic, just in a different colour, and the same wings, just in a different colour, and _we could be the same you and I_, and _finally, finally I see you_.

They smile at each other, there’s a wing that shields him from transparent droplets. And then the angel is gone and he doesn’t know his name. Will it be the colour of dragonflies?

_Why would they need a weapon_. What a silly question.

The dandelions survive God’s damnation. 

Every time Crowley thinks of them a purple ache weighs him down like rusty shackles. He counts the days until they turn to centuries. 

It feels so human to behold a mirror image. They do that all the time on their polished obsidians, their pieces of glass, their copper discs. He doesn’t understand the charm until he spots a well known pearlescent aura that stands out among the unbelievers who are laughing at the ark, and his mind helps complete the picture with a pair of wings that frame his worried looks. 

Aziraphale. 

Tunics that softly tickled their calves are down to their ankles. Humans don’t mind them as long as they look like everyone else, but they’re not looking hard enough.

Crowley gets as close as he can to those angelic eyes, a compact flock of swallows that shift against an upcoming storm, blues and greens and greys he cannot name, that are familiar but feel so different they must be new. 

Nobody trusts Noah when he warns against the flood. He is the only one who has to bear the knowledge he’ll have to watch people turn cerulean under relentless waves of mud.

Everyone is going to die, even children. God told him: not your children and your wives. As if that could change anything. The idea returns every night in his nightmares and in Crowley’s every waking hour when the menacing ashen clouds start rolling in.

After the rain stops the world becomes a giant mirror. Noah looks out of the ark, its reflection the only thing that reassures him everything is real when he’s about to go mad.

Crowley attentively stares at his own image for the first time, it would be impossible not to, but what he sees is foreign. A shadow surrounded by sky blue doesn’t make much sense in his memory. He finds himself hoping for the elusive angel to be his image and the ache is back to keep the wait company.

The dandelions survive the flood. 

He finds Aziraphale on the Golgotha, the worst possible time to feel relief and find himself.

They’re wearing more layers of clothing than ever, hiding their hair in a white swirl of beige and loose charcoal.

Nobody notices the contrast because a gruesome spectacle keeps them distracted. Most of them barely hide a mischievous, entertained grin with a sleeve. Crowley discovers all the violence that builds its abode behind indifferent glances. 

Jesus lies on the cross, his skin paler and paler as the torture continues.

At least in the garden thorns made sure plants would flourish. Nothing reminds of flowers when the crown draws vermilion rivulets of knowledge out of a man who preached kindness because of God’s twisted plan.

Only some understand, but their fate doesn’t look brighter. God tells them: it’s only one man this time. Crowley knows it’s not true, it’s the time of martyrs and it’s never going to stop. 

The few who don’t have to touch to believe will walk continents and speak their knowledge, and people will start talking of serpents and spiral horns and of sins that enter your soul through your eyes and devils with unnaturally tinted irises.

They will kill art, burn curiosity, choose sides. Humans will be aware of hell and heaven like never before, they will know them like white and black, but what they call white and black never comes close to the brightness of the moment Earth was created or the spots of darkness that engulf entire planets. And they will keep killing and burning and choosing without choice. 

Crowley finds an excuse for the angel to stay a little longer. He doesn’t want him to become a stranger, not when so much of what he believes about himself holds on to the lines of that smile he hasn’t forgotten in centuries.

He wants to compare the shadows their wings cast on the sepulchre moments before the earthquake, their shoulders sagging from defeat, the deep lines carved in their forehead by infinite sorrow.

When they share the last look, knowing what is to come, Aziraphale almost makes him forget that their eyes don’t match in shape and colour, that their feathers welcome light in a different way, that they can’t remain on Earth much longer, that they have to report what happened to their opposite sides. 

Crowley wonders for a moment if those sides ever made sense. He wonders if the same Jesus who loved teaching in the temple as a young boy decided to sacrifice himself for a salvation that never came instead of embracing the gift of knowledge because he had been warned against the sulfur gaze that gift came from. 

He drinks in the image of the angel before he disappears with a quick goodbye for the third time since Eden. 

He wishes he could keep thinking of him as a silver mirror in an ivory frame, but under the cross he beholds his serpent eyes in a pool of blood and water and vinegar.

The next time they meet he’s wearing glasses.


	2. Chapter 2

Street vendors are shouting at every corner, adorning with expletives the reasons why half their Greek-sounding, Roman-looking goods are worth bargaining over. One sings the prices of fruit, another declaims the fine quality of wool and linen.

A young girl with a shrill voice is tapping her foot while she waits for the scratching to stop until a basket of hastily cleaned fish finds its place against her hip.

There is some low giggling that reminds of a quietly simmering pot. Children rhythmically smash wooden toys against the pavement, and one of them cries out as a pair of hands lift him by his belt and pat his toga clean.

The splashing from a fountain where an old man is gathering water mixes with the dripping of a urinating dog that barks at a caged hen before he finds a best distraction in the loose string of a quick sandal, the dark waves of a tunic that doesn’t look quite Roman, not quite Greek either.

As the ear-shattering sound of chariot wheels on hard stones grows fainter there is a distinctive mixture of aggressively loud chatter coming from a small group of men. Anyone close enough to understand their words learns that it's a group of actors discussing their wages, although some scattered meaning travels to the edge of the square into the ears of a goldsmith who seems pretty confused by people being so loud with their emotions while he is trying to understand the last sentence from the foreigner who just purchased a silver laurel wreath and is now headed for the tavern.

Stepping into the room Crowley listens and counts. Two, seven, ten? How many sestertii for a glass? He’ll drink acres of blood for thirty pieces of silver.

The beer he enjoyed with the Britons was nothing like this Falernian, already aging in its amphora when Jesus turned water into wine.

His mouth waters as the liquid gets poured much more carefully than any other beverage. It travelled north as Crowley travelled south.

The smell of alcohol is enough to relieve the sadness in his chest and it’s so strong he could probably set the liquid on fire with a wink, no miracle involved. He pays what it’s due, he pays a lot.

When he takes the first sip without adding water everyone knows better than to bother him.

He’s suffering banishment again.

It dawned on him weeks after stumbling upon a battle, more like a skirmish between tribes, the clangor of weapons and shields coming from behind a hill making up for the size of the actual scene.

He had sat and watched what humans were capable of regardless of any demonic guile.

A warrior, a young thing, blond curls half stained with mud, had raised his sword against the sunlight with a pained cry. An unbearable pull, a what if?, feathers rustling as the enemy’s bloodstained blade collided with someone else’s helmet.

Then silence. An empty field near a village.

Crowley almost sobbing at the shock and this rattling breath between his arms, so weak.

He didn’t know what happened, he only knew that he was ready to hold him for as long as it would take, he would do anything to make his last breaths more bearable. The air around them had vibrated with the sound of the man’s favourite tune, a song about cattle, green fields and young maidens, but his limbs had started moving restlessly, his last words aimed at serpent eyes which revealed the demon’s true nature behind the small dark glasses.

Crowley had buried him and made a hawthorn tree appear fully formed, with roots eating deep in his skull, and he had wept.

He was a demon and little else. The dying man had recoiled at his attempt to soothe him, just like Jesus had assumed malice in his selfless desire to show him all the kingdoms of the world.

Crowley’s pity is worthless, he’d better obey Hell, forget kindness.

He sits and drinks himself into a stupor.

Why is he thinking of the Britons again? No, not the beer... Ah! Claudius! He could learn something from him. Appear weak and nobody will ask anything of you, appear harmless and nobody will try to kill you. It doesn’t work with Hell, does it? They will use anyone as a weapon... Conquering Britain of all things… in how many years? Oh, but will they cut down his white hawthorn, will they turn him into bow and arrows? His...

Even the most underestimated human survival instinct, hearing one’s own name in the loudest of crowds, works differently for him. It’s not his name that catches his ear, not even the vowel that slips in and is quickly patched up with the right one leaving barely visible stitches.

He could swear it’s the cheaper wine that’s giving him hearing illusions. And yet it’s the _sound_ of his name, it’s the voice that makes him turn, and the whole room with him, and then he could swear he’s experiencing optical illusions too. ...Angel?

“Still a demon?”

Oh. It’s incredible how harmful a simple breath, two folds of flesh and just the tip of a tongue can be.

  
_Shut up, angel, shut up, you don’t know what happened, don’t remind me how I saw your face when I was miles from you, how I missed your company. _

_No. No. Speak! Talk to me. _

_What about those oysters, I’ve never eaten an oyster? "Let me tempt you? " You’re as kind as a friend to me, angel. You know who I am and you’re so kind. I’m listening. I can get rid of the alcohol, stop the buzzing in my head. I’ll pay._

  
Petronius greets Aziraphale like the most loyal of customers. Aziraphale eats his food with adoration.

A cithara starts playing and Crowley feels something new. One end of its strings must be anchored to his innards, the same end you twist to adjust the sound.

For a second he wishes the angel could use his knife to open him up like an oyster, help him unscrew the pegs, get rid of the pressure, tune the scale down a whole step, maybe two.

But Aziraphale is just chewing elegantly and swallowing every bite with immense pleasure. Heaven would never approve. Hell would destroy the angel if anyone found them enjoying lunch together. 

Crowley’s mind freezes at the thought of hellfire raising to take his only companion away from him. This time he’s the one who disappears with an excuse. I’m terribly sorry, but…

  
It’s easier to pretend you’re human when you’re wearing armor.

Crowley manages to hide in plain sight for centuries. They meet in the foggy, damp silence of the forest.

There’s no invitation to lunch, just metal clunking at every step, soggy grass and moss under their feet, a suggestion, the inevitable outraged dismissal.

  
And how many wars have they witnessed up to now? How many wise rulers? How many key changes in the symphony of humanity? How many string instruments can Crowley miracle from his imagination? How much pressure before the neck snaps?

Their souls finally sing in unison for a moment inside the Globe.

This time the rest of their melody emerges perfectly coherent, beautifully consonant, from the cacophony of Heaven and Hell’s instructions.

An actor raises his questions from the stage like the demon did thousands of years before, a soliloquy without an answer, the spitting image of Crowley’s mind for centuries to come and this idea, sleep. He should try that.

Aziraphale keeps baring his indecisive nature for all to see, but it’s endearing to watch him fill with suggestions his complete lack of answers.

They sound like melodies that blur the memory of an unforgiving God and, for a second, Heaven seems like a home he wants to return to.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley is always riddled with doubt, and considering how rarely he gets an answer instead of weird looks and a scoff it’s notably surprising that, in the autumn of 1793, he’s absolutely sure of one thing: Paris smells worse than Hell, worse than what he thinks even his soul might smell like.

Every corner he turns reveals a new torture for his nostrils. People smell like every single one of their bodily functions and illnesses and sour as vinegar and bad choices.

Crowley can tell who’s been to church only for a few seconds before the elegant touch of frankincense quickly succumbs to the mold from clothes kept in terrible conditions, to the onions and garlic mixing with bile, to the sweat of the protests in the streets.

They don’t know their revolution will be like trying to conceal the stench of their country with rivers of the most expensive perfume, notes of iron that will be left to rot with a new dictator.

Jean-Louis Fargeon could be elbows deep in fat and fresh petals of any kind and he would still smell like the corrupted bowels of France as soon as he opened his mouth.

It takes more than a bath to get rid of a putrescent core. It might even take a bath in holy water.

What Crowley doesn’t know, amongst other things, is the exact moment he starts rationalising a new smell among the general decay of the city or how - how in Heaven - he can tell exactly who that scent belongs to.

He materialises a bit too quickly inside the gaol, has to lay down and catch his human breath as the sans-culottes explains the purpose of a guillotine like a chef explains an intricate menu.

He can’t wait much longer, stops time, wears a smug grin.

Aziraphale is as exquisite as the smell of candied lemon and ginger wrapped in pink tulle, as tempting as a narcissus that catches its image in a pond and is considerate enough to turn into an angel of immortal beauty.

The legs of his stool are wedged in the dirt of hundreds of prisoners that shared the cell before him, and yet he’s always his gracious self, always exuding the same undefinable scent underneath whatever perfume he wears. He smells heavenly, but doesn’t entirely smell of Heaven. 

Crowley cannot but accept his offer for crêpes even if he isn’t planning to eat, their flavour would get spoiled by a city that reeks of sin.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, seems to be able to concentrate on the flambéed sweetness of peaches, and that alone, for a good fifteen minutes.

Crowley learns something more about himself, as it’s always been, from his mirror, but this time it’s different. It happens as they are saying their goodbye and planning their next miracles and tentations. 

Aziraphale is standing closer to him for no apparent reason, he tells one of his embarrassing jokes, a whiff of fruity aroma leaves his lips as he laughs.

Crowley’s mouth waters.

It’s not hunger, he doesn’t feel like ordering crêpes for himself, he doesn’t imagine getting lost in their fumes.

It’s a little too late when he decides to consult his human mind just as Aziraphale disappears in the crowd and, with little effort, he comes to the conclusion that his body would very much like to get even closer, close enough to kiss that mouth.

Or it’s perfectly on time as the caramel still lingers in his nose and Aziraphale doesn’t have to see his expression crumble.

Or even too early, he knows it, centuries, possibly the rest of eternity.

The angel is no longer just a mirror the second Crowley desires to own a piece of him, the second he realises he would give up much more than one piece of himself to smell sweetness from those lips again and again.

And for decades he bribes every perfumer, perfects every technique, tries to save this memory in a vial. Nothing seems to work. 

Hell grows restless at the mention of a new war against Heaven. Crowley hopes neither party can smell his fear.

He’d rather be discorporated than fight against Aziraphale, he wants him to know that, he wants him to feel safe even if he’s a demon with a rotten core and yellow eyes, he wants him to understand that his loyalty to a greater power still falters when said power takes drastic decisions that don't make any sense.

His motivation doesn’t fit on the paper, he leaves no space to read between the lines, and his angel can’t decipher the language of emotions he still refuses to learn.

_ Fraternising _. That’s what enemies do when they sing Christmas songs and share soup in the middle of No Man’s Land with the knowledge they will go back to their trenches and guns, the former as a desire of their heart, the latter as command from the cold machine of war which Aziraphale still can’t stop listening to. 

Crowley remembers Shakespeare. _ To sleep, perchance to dream _. As he falls asleep he asks his lungs to stop breathing for as long as his body will need sedation, he needs to stop thinking about daffodils and pure feathers and the old ache that returned to his chest. 

It takes a century, a bomb, and having his lungs filled with the holy dust from the roof of a church to forget he was ever mad at Aziraphale and stop caring about whether or not he thinks of him as a friend of convenience or a potential enemy in darker circumstances.

Every time his angel will try to interpret his feelings as anything but selfless to convince himself Heaven is still a better choice, Crowley’s actions will always, always keep on proving him wrong no matter the sacrifice. 

_ Shut up - little demonic miracle of mine - lift home _. He really hopes the burning holiness only belongs to the ground. It doesn’t. 

Three small sentences and he can’t smell for a few decades afterwards. 

He doesn’t even realise Aziraphale is sitting in his car with a thermos full of holy water until he turns his head.

He knows he shouldn’t get his hopes up, and it’s so hard, the angel sounds honestly concerned for his well being.

Did he really change his mind after more than a century?

Will he ever understand the real meaning of his small kindnesses? The hidden _ please _ , _ thank you _ , _ stay a little longer _ , _ I care about you _in every shared meal and car ride?

_ You go too fast for me _ . It’s not _ we’re on different sides _ or _ this is not the right moment _ or _ we should stop this _. Too fast.

If you want to go fast go alone.

Crowley is afraid that all this sniffing at the mouth of the bottle, deciding the wine is perfectly aged and putting the cork back without taking a sip will never stop. In the long run it might even ruin the wine. He swears he will do everything in his power to prevent it. 

He gets his sense of smell back just in time to invite Aziraphale at the Ritz. There’s going to be an apocalypse in eleven years, he can grant himself a little indulgence, bring back memories.

He has always loved watching his angel’s human ways, how he closes his eyes as well as his mouth when he tastes the food, the choice to enhance his natural scent, this time with vanilla, patchouli, honey, chamomile and rose.

They should be worried about the future. Maybe in a second. Maybe when it’s not just the two of them and the rest of the evening and several glasses of fine wine.

They never talk about serious issues when they’re drunk, so Crowley can get entirely, soberly hurt by Aziraphale’s refusal to acknowledge they are on their own side, or how God truly is omnipotent but so is their will when they work together to bring back a bit of balance in the beautiful universe their sides want to upset.

They find a semblance of balance as Warlock’s garden becomes one of Crowley's heart-shaped-locket versions of Eden.

Eleven years of potential bliss spoiled by foul heart notes of anguish, constantly, no longer about the horrors of the past but the terrifying ideas of what will happen in the future. 

He can’t help becoming more and more delusional every time they collaborate and having his heart broken every time Aziraphale reminds him of their places in the big scheme. 

Crowley needs certainty, safety. All he gets is a burning bookshop, dreadful numbing loneliness.

His drunken mind is filled with monsters and shadows from the time he fell, and the present monsters that inhabit Hell and did this to his angel.

He keeps drinking, he needs a different kind of pain. Every drunken bastard smells the same. 

And yet Aziraphale finds him, he speaks to him, so unequivocally on his side he finds it hard to believe, and Crowley’s still going to pull whatever dangerous stunt he was trying to come up with in order to stop the apocalypse but oh, finally, finally!

He will fight both Heaven and Hell to have him back even for a second, because how much lower can a demon fall? In love? 

That’s all the motivation he needs to save the day. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating will make sense in this chapter - skip to the next if you're not into kinda explicit sad wanks. I promise a lighter ending, but Crowley has been a mess for 6000 years and it's not something that can be fixed in a second.

They hold hands while they switch bodies and walk around his apartment for a while to make it more comfortable. Different shapes come with different centers of gravity, perceptions of space and reactions. Aziraphale, a few inches taller now, jokes about falling over because of those chopstick legs, then he gets all serious and somehow a little sad as he watches Crowley run a hand over the damaged areas of his waistcoat. 

_ “ _ Honestly, angel? I don’t know how you manage with all these layers. It’s getting really hot in here and I’m the cold-blooded one” _ . _

Velvet has a texture he recognises from every garden he’s ever visited. Snapdragon, celosia, sage, apricots. The raised threads caress his skin, the sensation travels along his arm, the sharp angles of his jaw, becomes a light pinprick in the back of his tongue. 

“What’s that thing you do with your eyebrows when you’re thinking, dear? Wait, let me show you so you can help me fix it.”

“Angel, stop doing that with my face! They will never believe it’s me!”

“You should see what you’re doing to mine...”

Aziraphale presses his lips in a line feigning outrage, then shakes with a demon’s voice laughter, the ripples of his forehead easing away while he holds on to Crowley’s angelic arm.

And Crowley shivers so unexpectedly and violently as if he’d just been startled by the voice of God herself. The memories of his fall are clear, he can’t help it, they are vivid like the sight of his smiling friend in front of him.

And he’s tired, tired of mixing his past pain with the joy brought by his angel’s company, tired of only believing that this intense whirlwind of emotions will forever be the mark of Heaven’s cruelty instead of his angel’s sympathy and all-embracing compassion. 

When Crowley miracles a mirror in a spare room just to look into those breathtaking eyes for as long as he pleases, the heaviness in his chest is back to haunt him, shouting its name, stabbing his organs from the inside, flooding black bile. He knows it will cause an infection, spread to his extremities and paralyse him.

He would talk to the mirror to finally give a shape to all his worries and desires if the reflection didn’t know how to parrot his heartache.

His mind has been swinging like a pendulum between an itch, a desperation to act out the burning tension in his limbs, get rid of this skin, tear the nerves apart, and mantras of denial, calm and composure, _ it will never be like that, it will never work, you’re just making your existence even more unbearable than it already is _.

Now it's not the right time to think about it, they have each others to save and that's where all his hope should be building a safe nest. 

Well, here he is, 6000 years too late, coming back alone to his apartment after their celebratory lunch at the Ritz, and considering hibernation. 

Black silk slides over his body and makes his skin crawl. It desires a different kind of touch, a touch with purpose, not a stolen one, not just the casual brush of hands or the heat of thighs on close bus seats. Not now that he knows what Aziraphale’s body feels like.

He needs to get ready for the night or next century nonetheless, some music might help.

He cleans the dust off a vinyl, a present from an acquaintance way back in the 70s, and takes it personal when looped laughter turns into a desperate cry.

There’s melancholy in every chord, abandon the voice that tells him _ breathe in the air, don’t be afraid to care _.

He wears sounds more fitting than his clothes as he lays down and looks at the concrete ceiling.

He wonders if, maybe, in a different universe, with different bodies, purposes, and stories to tell, Aziraphale might embrace touch as a language too.

In that universe he would hold his face softly between his hands and whisper something that might sound like this.

_ I’m sorry humans decided to twist the most innocent pleasures and turn them into weapons, my love. I’m sorry they negotiated imbalance in the most unifying acts _ . _ You’d be wrong if you thought my desire was anything but selfless, if my hands holding you were anything but the expression of utter devotion. Let humans have their shame, let them proudly hate affection, let them sneer at the mention of the miracle we’re about to create. We are on our own side, we can choose our meanings as we go. You and I have lived enough to know that. _

In that universe he will make one of his offers too, so used to acts of service that it will leave his lips in the same casual tone as any other time.

And instead of _ let’s have lunch _ it will be _let’s make love _.

_ My treat _.

Will Aziraphale kiss the inside of his wrist and the palm of his hand _ like this _?

Will he add a little wetness along the stream of veins on his forearm and bite the burning flesh _ like this _?

Will he pause over his pulse and count the hurried beats against his mouth _ like this _? 

Crowley closes his eyes as he thinks of his limbs as his and his angel’s at the same time. They have inhabited the same space before, it’s all too easy. 

He likes the dampness of fingers that dance on his tongue, run on the irregular edge of his teeth, along the side of his neck, his collarbones, back to his lips.

He smothers himself with disguised kisses thinking of his angel’s smile and the contemplative way he eats dessert.

His right hand goes from playing the part of eager lips back to its purpose, to doing what the demon tells it to do, to feeling what the angel would feel. His left is a white-knuckled knot buried in his sheets.

He starts combing through short hair, tugs lightly, his scalp relieved at the prospect of being shaken from the pressure of thousands of thoughts fighting and bruising each other below the surface like a school of worried sea creatures hunted by a shark. Crowley miracles it slightly longer, curlier, softer.

He can’t stand to wear a shirt any longer, even the delicate sensation of silk seems too coarse against his incandescent skin, but he's shaking, the buttons are his enemies.

There is so much ache in his chest he worries his body might not make it. Has a human organism ever had to bear the burden of this much love? It surely couldn’t bear the touch and kiss of an angel. 

He won’t stop, not now. Nobody is watching him anymore. 

Will his angel let him lick his beautifully soft fingers, take them into his mouth two at a time, play with them, part them with an eager tongue _ like this _?

Will he use his other hand to untie, clumsily, the rough and cold serpent head on his belt, half-unzip, half-caress the trousers off one hip, off the other, just enough to free him, _ like this _?

Will he dare touch, _ like this _? 

An immense pain, a familiar concoction of anguish, misery and despair makes his stomach want to flee his body. Lower, such a foreign pleasure. 

Will he still allow handshakes, sitting on benches, dining at the Ritz, getting drunk in the privacy of his shop if he knew?

Will he be able to read the passion in his glance and decide it’s inappropriate? 

Will he even care? 

And it’s not about the hand sliding with ease over his length, it’s not about his other fingers being eagerly sucked and bitten to satiate his hunger, it’s about his snake eyes, the damnation that comes with them, mistrust, rejection.

So he covers them with the pillow, head thrown back on the mattress, and pretends his angel won’t have to see them again. What a mistake, showing his nature, serving himself up for scrutiny on a drunken evening, hoping to inspire faith like humans do when they want to reassure about their honesty. 

And he keeps wondering more than before how do humans stand this ache in their chest and this bliss in their nerves, when his mind is pulling him in every direction and he feels like he’s being hanged, drawn and quartered. 

Oh, the sounds he’s making.

The walls of his room can’t possibly be allowed to hear them. The plants in his house will have a solid argument to whisper when they have their vengeance, the city will make them travel through traffic and rain, the entire universe will laugh at him and send a crow as black as his soul, demand that it wait outside his angel’s library, and its caw will have the shape of his ache and Aziraphale will know, and it will be unbearable. 

He pulls the pillow over his nose and mouth too, angry teeth biting into it, an arm holding it against his face.

Without even realising he miracles Aziraphale’s scent on the pillowcase. 

He breathes too quickly, too little oxygen. Exhales whimpers and muffled cries. 

It's the only way to smell it.

His lungs start to sting in pain as they fight back. 

He imagines lowering his gaze only to see a crown on honeysuckle hair tickle the skin above his auburn mess with every movement, thumbs insistent on his hips to keep him still.

_Oh angel, make me shiver. _

He comes with surprise, panic and a prayer, bursting with ecstasy, wings unfurled, gasping for air. The electricity that’s coursing under his skin doesn’t fade. It instantly morphs into something dark and desperate. His last cry turns into miserable sobbing. 

He can't calm down, he forgot how to do it, how he could simply miracle himself a nice evening.

He shakes for half an hour, almost drowning in tears, wrapped in his own feathers. 

He’ll let God, Satan and every universe hear that, hear what his ache does to him. 


End file.
